This week's Sunday shows took on a conspiratorial edge as two chairmen of high-profile congressional committees both suggested that Edward Snowden leaked NSA material with the help of another country. On "This Week," Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told George Stephanopoulos that he believed Snowden was “cultivated by a foreign power to do what he did.”

When pressed to name the foreign power, McCaul punted, saying that he couldn't give "a definitive answer." At this point it seems worth mentioning that McCaul was being beamed in for his interview by satellite from Russia, where he is attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi and working to keep security arrangements fluid between Russia and the United States.

For good measure, McCaul added that Snowden was a traitor and was living down the street from where McCaul was giving his interview "enjoying probably less freedoms here in Russia today than he had in the United States of America."

Meanwhile, on "Meet the Press," a joint appearance by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, who chair the intelligence committees for the Senate and House respectively, immediately got more interesting when the subject turned to Edward Snowden.

“Let me just say this. I believe there’s a reason he ended up in the hands, the loving arms, of an FSB agent in Moscow. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

"We have questions that we have to answer but as someone who used to do investigations some of [the] things we are finding we would call clues that certainly would indicate to me that he had some help and he stole things that had nothing to do with privacy.”

After Rogers launches into more detail and when David Gregory asks Feinstein whether she agreed, Feinstein gives a verbal shrug. The entire interview is worth your time:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.